The Beginning of the End

Remember how yesterday I mentioned that this week would probably be work-filled? Well, it’s already started out that way. Today was the last day we had to collect data for our research project, and the pool we had, while sufficient in total amount, was only one-third male. We didn’t know whether there would be any correlation with gender in the data, but even so, it was something we didn’t want to risk, so we spent a lot of time trying to find more boys to test. All of the boys in our class, of which there are 5 without including Alex and I, were tested, George was tested, Alex’s roommate was tested, and around 2-3 other boys were tested. There wasn’t really anywhere to go from there, so we decided that because the test was representative of the effects of metacognition and not dependent on gender we would be fine.

The Mansueto-Regenstein connection.

In addition to data collection, there was also a response paper due. This was my 4th so far. Basically what we have to do for a response paper is take a concept that we learned in class, write about was interesting or confusing about it, and then detail a future study based on that topic. I wrote about the effects of role model intervention. In class, we learned about some strategies that could be used to promote STEM, and one of them was intervention on the phenomenon of stereotype threat. Stereotype threat occurs when people are scared of confirming a negative stereotype against a group that they are part of, which negatively affects their performance. An example would be a study we looked at last week where the students who were afraid of confirming the stereotype that females are bad at math didn’t perform as well on math tests as those who identified with their Asian qualities beforehand. The group of Asian females tested all took surveys, but for some, the surveys targeted their gender and gender-related traits, while the rest were asked questions about their race. The female-oriented subjects were scared of confirming the stereotype that females aren’t as good at math as males are, so they did worse. Role model intervention helps reduce the effects of stereotype threat. It is basically the introduction of a positive role model of the same group that is being affected by the stereotype. In the study we looked at, women performed better on math tests when they read an article about a woman who was successful in math before taking the test.

A building I saw on my walk home.

For my response paper, I questioned whether or not the passage would have an undesirable effect if women were to read a positive article about a male who is successful in math. I reasoned that it would likely reinforce the stereotype that men are better at math than women, and so would cause the women to do more poorly on the tests than if they hadn’t read at all. I haven’t really been a victim of stereotype threat in academic situations yet; to start with, I’m an Asian-American male, so I don’t have to worry about confirming any negative stereotypes in school, and secondly, my school is very liberal and mixed, so it’s not like stereotypes are being shoved down my throat anyway. I think that it’s regrettable that stereotypes are so prevalent in today’s society that they implicitly affect performance on tests, but it’s good to know that it has been identified as a problem.